When a component held in a carrier tape is supplied in a component mounting apparatus, a tape feeder is used. The carrier tape is wound and stored in a reel and is pulled out by the tape feeder and is pitch-fed to thereby be moved in a take-out position by a mounting head. When a carrier tape of one reel is consumed and a tape feeder is replenished with a component, splicing in which a subsequent tape stored in a new reel is spliced to a preceding tape in use attached to the tape feeder is performed. Since splicing work is work of joining two carrier tapes together while making a check of a pitch or alignment, a worker is forced to do complicated and time-consuming work in each case of being replenished with the component. In order to reduce such a burden on the worker, a splicing-less feeder for making a subsequent tape follow from the back of a preceding tape and supplying the subsequent tape to a tape feeder without joining two carrier tapes together has been proposed (for example, see Patent Reference 1).
Patent Reference 1 is JP-A-2011-211169.